Page - 829 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

On Ivans, Serbs and Wops 829 months later, it was already overflowing, since around 56,000 Italians had been accom- modated. Upon their arrival, the Italians differed from the Russians already in their appear- ance, since they arrived in fine uniforms and, above all, good footwear, whilst many of the Russians had been barefoot and had remained so until late autumn of the first year of the war. The Italian prisoners of war were also marginally better off than the Russians in the sense that the latter had to initially manage without a functioning in- frastructure, build the camps themselves and also produce their own basic needs. For the Italians, it was considered necessary ‘only’ to bring about a type of ‘Italianisation’ by exchanging the contents of the camp libraries and printing the newspaper Il Lavoratore (The Worker) instead of Nedelya (The Week). This proved to be a grave error, for which a disproportionately large number of Italians in camps such as Mauthausen, Terezín or Sigmundsherberg paid for with their lives. Initially, everything appeared to be more or less on the right track. The Italians, who could make known their arrival in whichever camp with the help of the prisoner of war postal service, subsequently received masses of parcels from their homeland,1970 above all foodstuffs. Requests to the Italian govern- ment to avoid individual consignments and instead deliver certain amounts of goods for collective supply, just as France did for their prisoners of war in Germany, were not complied with by Italy, which instead pointed to obligations under international law. According to Italy, Austria-Hungary was alone responsible for the orderly and adequate supply of its prisoners. The fact is that the number of consignments declined and the physical condition of the Italians deteriorated from the beginning of 1917. The suspicion cannot be entirely dismissed that Italy had caused or contributed to the star- vation and death of thousands, since with its reference to the fate of the ailing prisoners of war it wanted to prevent desertion.1971 Then Flitsch-Tolmein happened. Austria-Hungary captured 140,000 men in ‘hu- man booty’ and initially regarded them as evidence of its military victory, but soon thereafter as a problem that eclipsed everything that had gone before. The Imperial and Royal War Ministry had in fact originally expected to capture far more prisoners of war. The Germans, however, insisted on a ratio of 1 :1. The camps were overcrowded. Ultimately, 468,000 Italian prisoners of war were recorded in the Austrian and Hun- garian camps.1972 It was impossible to construct new prisoner of war camps so quickly. The number of prisoners in Austria-Hungary was approaching the two-million mark. Around 60 per cent of them were Russians, namely between 1.27 and 1.33 million in absolute figures. Serbs and Montenegrins were reflected in the statistics with 167,000 prisoners of war, whilst the Italians totalled 370,000 to 468,000 and the Romanians 52,800.1973 The camp administrations literally begged that no further prisoners be sent. Alone the accommodation of the Italian general and staff officers was a problem, since they